The present invention relates to graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and more particularly to the automated provision of alternative GUIs for a given GUI of an application.
Mobile devices have limited resources in terms of processing power, memory, storage, network bandwidth and energy supply compared to conventional desktop computer systems. The following operations associated with using client applications on a mobile device are therefore in general considered as problematic: a) rich, complex, “heavyweight” GUIs comprising lots of graphical elements and/or code as such GUIs require considerable network, memory and CPU resources for being instantiated and/or for being provided via a network to the client device; b) frequent client-server roundtrips; c) GUIs requiring a large screen space as they are considered as inconvenient to use on a small screen as they force a user to extensively scroll over the screen for getting a complete overview of the displayed data content and/or of the data entry fields that must be filled, whereby the scrolling movement consumes time and additional battery power.
On the other hand, heavy-weight GUIs often provide valuable graphical elements or functions that accelerate the task a user wants to perform with the GUI provided this GUI is presented on a large screen of a standard computer, e.g. an LCT screen connected to a standard desktop computer.
In a further aspect, many legacy applications solely comprise a single, heavyweight “legacy” or “original” GUI. Manually developing an additional, lightweight GUI that provides the same functionality is time consuming and expensive and is therefore rarely an option, in particular for companies that use a large number of legacy applications. Nevertheless, as a growing number of employees use smartphones and tablet computers for performing their working obligations, there is a need for enabling the employees to use the legacy applications also via their mobile devices within or outside of a company's premises.